


we're not broken, just bent (and we can learn to love again)

by PaladinoFandoms



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: (mild) cursing, Canon Compliant, F/M, Oneshot, hades pov, it's literally a retelling of canon events from hades' pov, my first hadestown fic!!, perspective change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 01:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19307851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaladinoFandoms/pseuds/PaladinoFandoms
Summary: Nothing's changed in the past millenia.For the first time, Hades considers that maybe it should.(A retelling of canon events from Hades' POV, focusing on his relationship with Persephone.)





	we're not broken, just bent (and we can learn to love again)

**Author's Note:**

> This was based off of the plot/lyrics from the NYTW run and only includes Hades/Persephone songs on the live album (I'm sorry @How Long).

Persephone’s voice carries loudly in the empty halls. She’s angry.

At him, presumably.

“I don’t know, why don’t you ask my _husband_?”

Hades knows the term is supposed to be far more endearing than she makes it out to be. Persephone wields the word like a weapon, pinning it to him with sharp glares and a derisive scoff.

Maybe her voice carries because she wants him to hear it, Hades thinks. But then again, she’s always been particularly loud.

Hades wonders who she’s talking to. He wonders what he’s done for the term to roll off her tongue the way one would say the name of an enemy. He keeps walking, almost relishing in her expression of shock as she turns the corner and nearly slams into him.

“Wife,” he greets. There is no emotion in his voice.

Persephone’s nostrils flare, and her lips twist into a frown before she stalks past him. Hades sighs through his nose, almost inaudible, and continues walking. He builds his armor thicker against her words. What else can he do?

That night, another factory springs up.

That night, the pale lily on his desk wilts.

* * *

The workers in Hadestown call him “my lord”, bowing their heads and barely veiling their contempt with respect.

Persephone does not bother with pretending.

Hades walks around his factories, watching his workers’ shoulders stiffen and the clacking of machinery quicken as he nears.

“My lord,” they say as he passes, their voices blending into a low murmur.

He opens the door and sees Persephone about to enter, a suspiciously wrapped bundle tucked under her arm.

“What, refreshments for me?” Hades’ lips stretch into a thin imitation of a smile. “How thoughtful.”

Persephone narrows her eyes.

“Of course, my lord,” she grits out, and shoves the bundle into his chest.

Before he can even open his mouth, she disappears, leaving behind the faint smell of strawberries.

Hades carries the bundle with him as he completes his rounds. The further along the wall he walks, the more that the sweet smell sours into the familiar tang of decay. When he finally opens the bundle, the fruit is rotten, apples spotted and soft to the touch.

Useless things, not really meant for him anyway. Maybe Persephone is right to stop pretending. There is no warmth to be wrung out of forced gestures.

He throws them out.

The next morning, the apples are gone from the trash bin.

The next morning, Hades sees the cores badly hidden among the machinery. A single apple sits on the doorstep where he had bumped into her the day before, mockingly ripe.

* * *

Hades is familiar with the things that his workers call him behind his back.

They’re neither bold enough nor stupid enough to say it to his face, but Persephone is, and she makes up for it in spades.

“This place is a rotten fucking dump and I can’t wait to see the day it crashes down on you,” she screams. “To hell with your goddamn factories and power grids. Unnatural, shitty excuses for the harbor you claim them to be!”

He knows he shouldn’t, and in another world he might not have, but this time—and like every time before—he responds in kind.

“Ungrateful woman,” he snarls. “I give you all I have to offer and you throw it all away?”

Persephone laughs and the sound grates into his soul.

“If you call this ‘trying’ you have hell of a lot to work on.”

“You want warmth, I give it to you. You complain about the atmosphere, I put stars in the sky for you and-”

“You say warmth and set enough fires to burn this place alive,” she sneered. “The so called stars are bright enough to blind, and don’t even try pretending you give a shit about anyone.”

Hades is slipping under her rage and they both know it.

Persephone huffs and crosses her arms around her waist. “Things used to be better, you know. Before you built this hellhole and that damned wall.”

“Things are just fine and you would see it if you bothered getting off of that high horse of yours. Don’t you see I’m doing all of this for you, because I _care_ -”

“Ooh, does the big powerful king of the Underworld have _emotions_?” She mocks. “Could’ve had me fooled, you know. I’m sure the workers would agree.”

“You’re the only one who complains about this,” he deflects, grasping at straws and half-truths. She _was_ the only one who made a fuss—as well as the only one who knew she could do so without retribution. “What, do you have higher standards because you’re an almighty goddess of pollen and hay fever? If the workers are fine with it-”

“If the workers are fine with it,” Persephone spits, “then you can drag another one of them down into this dump!”

“Maybe I will!”

“Maybe you should find a better wife while you’re at it, if you think I’m so horrible!”

“Oh, I don’t believe that’ll be too difficult,” Hades snaps.

Persephone levels a glare at him and bursts into rose petals and sharp briars that crumble into ash not even seconds after she disappears.

Any way he looks at it, Hades is trapped between not doing anything and doing what she says, and neither of those are good options.

Hades is a man of habit.

The next day, Hades tells the Fates to keep everyone in line and goes up to the human world. The next day, Persephone slams open the doors just in time to see the life flicker out of the eyes of a young girl.

* * *

Persephone does not speak to him for the next few days.

Somehow, no names are worse than horrible ones.

The first time she deigns to look at him after their fight, she smiles too sweetly and tells him, “You fucked up.”

Hades scoffs, breezing past her.

“Don’t believe me? See for yourself.”

He turns around and sighs. Persephone has draped herself over her throne, feet dangling onto his.

“You-”

“We can have our little chat later,” she says, and he tries not to roll his eyes at her nonchalant tone. “It’s incredibly rude of you to ignore your visitor.”

The throne room doors behind Persephone creak open, and he tears his eyes away from her to glance at the mortal boy standing there.

“Who is he?” Hades demands.

Persephone smirks at him and repeats her previous words, stretching her feet further onto his throne. “You fucked up, darling.”

Hades hates the way the word is tacked on to the end, like she put it there just to rile him up. Hades hates the way he _knows_ it’s only there to annoy him.

Suddenly, he isn’t so sure he likes being addressed again.

That night, he sneaks out to the factories.

That night, he finds his newest recruit and the mortal boy kissing underneath the electric stars and smoky clouds, and doesn’t understand why they would risk so much for something as fickle as love. Persephone, spotting him as she leaves, doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t.

* * *

Sometimes Hades feels like he and Persephone are going around in circles.

She doesn’t talk to him or mention him at all, not since the “darling” incident. But she speaks, and when she speaks, he listens, and as he listens, he understands.

He hears her speak to the mortal girl, just as he’s been talking to the boy. He hears her talk to the mortal girl and only hears _Hades, Hades, Hades_.

Like _Hades, I wish to the gods that you were dead._

_Hades, don’t you remember; why did you have to change?_

And _Hades… do you still love me?_

But Hades is a man of habit, and his habits have the unfortunate effect of ruining things for everyone. His old rhetoric is the one that sits the most comfortably on his tongue, and it’s the one that leaves his lips, sickly sweet and rotting.

His words are directed at the boy, but the meaning for the woman he calls his wife. He punctuates his sentences with the shrieks of metal on metal, attacking her with every way he knows how.

That day, he wins the battle.

That day, he realizes he’s not even sure what war he’s fighting.

* * *

Hades doesn’t know what he expected.

He owns the workers’ souls but Persephone holds their hearts, and it’s all too clear which one really matters. Now, the boy threatens to take even what little Hades clings on to.

Hades is desperate, and he’s spiteful. He’s the lord of the underworld, king of the dead, and yet Persephone sympathizes with the mortal and his stupid emotions. Worst of all, he doesn’t even understand why.

He finds himself not understanding a lot of things these millenia. He doesn’t understand Persephone, he doesn’t understand the boy, doesn’t understand love.

Hades is an old god, and he is a tired god. Tired of fighting too much and trying too hard and doing everything just to fail in the end. Tired of the same things that happen every spring and every fall, tired of dancing around in circles. Tired of being stuck.

Because on one hand, he’s the king of the Hadestown, the man of habit, who would crush the boy with an iron fist and send him back up to the world above with a broken guitar and a broken heart.

On the other hand, he’s also an old soul; an old, old soul hopelessly in love with a woman doomed to leave him again and again and again, who would give the boy the chance that he himself never got.

But the name of Hades has a reputation to protect and an empire to build, and Hades cannot afford to be either of the two.

The Fates sing in his ear, a cackling cacophony of fear and doubt and he knows he has a choice to make.

That night, listening to the boy pour his heart out, Hades makes a choice that could save them.

That night, listening to the echoes of his own heart, Hades makes a choice that could save himself. 

* * *

 “You think they’ll make it?”

Hades answers truthfully. “I don’t know.”

Persephone keeps her voice surprisingly neutral. Forcefully neutral.

“Hades, you let them go.”

He hasn’t heard her say his name in a long, long time. He sighs, staring at their retreating forms.

“I let them try,” he corrects.

“And how about you and I?” Persephone challenges. “Are we going to try again?”

It is in that moment that he realizes what she wants.

“It’s almost spring.”

Persephone’s expression shutters and twists into a scowl. His hand, growing ever closer to hers, is met with the cold chill of absence as she snatches hers away.

Hades does something he hasn’t done in centuries. He reaches out to her.

“We’ll try again next fall?”

Persephone’s expression softens, and she lets her fingers slip between his.

“Wait for me?”

In this moment, Hades hears an answer.

In this moment, Hades hears the softest whisper of a question.

Hades remembers when they were younger gods, when they danced in the sun and snuck behind Demeter’s back. He remembers when she came down and the factories were not factories but fields of gemstone flowers that bloomed the whole winter through. He remembers when she let him call her Kore, when she wove him flower crowns that did not wilt until the next spring. He remembers when they loved each other. He remembers when they tried.

Hades looks over at Persephone and squeezes her hand. “I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Special big big thank you to my bff and just generally amazing human being, Inara!! Thank you so much for putting up with my bs and helping me with a bunch of stuff related to this fic (go follow her at biorpheus.tumblr.com you wont regret it)
> 
> And as always, constructive criticism/reviews and kudos are greatly appreciated!! Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it :D
> 
> (title from Just Give Me a Reason by P!nk)
> 
> edit: please give it notes here! 


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